My H2G2 7th volume version, the first 4 chapters
by Jochen Lembke
Summary: These are the first four chapters of my seventh-volume-version, based on my sixth.


Although my sixth volume is finished, this here is all I have written about a seventh one yet, and it´s not sure I will not completely edit this or rearrange the chapters in a different order, it´s still a work in progress, yet should give you an idea of what it´s heading towards and that I mean business.

I have not been authorised with my sixth version nor will I in the near future, but this is what I´m doing about it, you don´t want my sixth volume, Mr. Victor and Penguin books and still favour an author of children´s books, well, here´s my seventh, rubbed in your arrogant faces!

Be aware yet that English is not my first language and that this here is not edited by a native speaker (but feel invited to do so!)

I have uploaded the first edited six chapters of my sixth volume here, yet will not do this with my hole book, I will hold back the rest of all the 42 chapters until the day I am allowed to sell it, may this day never come or not. But what I will do is working on a slightly changed parody-version of it, which I can sell legally and will announce here as soon as this is available.

Jochen Lembke, Europes cab-driving writer

**Chapter 1 **

Arthur Dent sat on his throne like he was doing it every day and looked around into the wide open spaces.

Majestic he sat there and majestic too was the view from his throne.

Like inside a wide, spacious throne room, amidst of which the throne would sit, a free, wide view was given to him in all directions, yes, it was as if it would have been a particular wide and spacious hall, yes, a hall, which was so extraodinary big and spacious that the view nowhere fell anywhere, yes, to be put more accurately, it was as if the view fell anywhere nowhere.

Yes, the "throne room" was so spacious for that reason, there was no room, no hall at all, namely, the throne rested outside in the open in such a height the view seemed to fall to any which side into infinity, the throne was situated on top of a pyramide so high, there is now way to describe it, yet, one could say, would there have Mount Everest close by, one would not be able to look from Mount Everest onto the throne on the pyramid, it would be quite the other way round, the view from the throne would fall down onto the Everest and it would have been approximately the case that feelings of awe and grandeur definitely would be on the side of those who would look from the Everest up to the pyramid and not the other way round.

Somehow someone seemed to have had the intention when the pyramid was built, to get this point across in good time. (The fact that the pyramid was made completely and entirely, through and through, of pure gold merely aded to that, surely.)

Oh yes, Arthur just thought, the air is quite thin up here, and was tempted to carry out some sort of adjustment, enabling him to get a bit more oxygen, a thought, yes, almost a habitus, occuring to him regularly each day, just as as other little habitus, if not to say little odd tics and spleens, in the course of all this long time, he had passed now up here yet.

Yet, this regulation was not aquired, for his body obtained a whole bunch of proper body regulation mechanisms, enabling him very comfortably to cope with all various kinds of troubles and discomforts.

After all, it was perfect, his body, not human.

For quite a whole damn while I am sitting up here know, Arthur thought, you could certainly call it that. (It could pinch quite a bit, too, if Arthurs new body would not have had a lot regulation thingies against pinching) and, boy, they have made a damn monument out of me.

On earth, good old earth, there existed – before an edition of it had been levelled out of existence by the Vogons and the others, respectively, all those just possibly imaginable that had vanished together with the universe´s demise – just about the saying one „has made a monument out of himself", say, when someone, due to his outstanding achievements in the past, in the present does not have to lift a finger no more (another word for it was icon indeed), and there were people who had been pimped up like that in their very own lifetime – however that such a thing had to be taken literally, that had had never taken place on Earth.

However, here, it was the case.

They have made a damn monument out of me, Arthur thus thought, and it was a bit grime, as grime as the anti-grime-regulation-mechanisms in his body admitted, just before other mechanisms spitted put quickly large quantums of hormons producing majestic feelings again.

Arthur had a thorough stretch and uplifted himself to the full majestic size of his hundred earthly meters and started, evening began to fall, the descent down from the pyramid, a most welcome compensation to that whole damn sitting around all damn day long.

Moreover, that for the course of a whole damn year.

Moreover that for years after years. Many long years, many, many.

Yes, an awful damn lot of time, one can rather say, for Arthur sat here quite a damn long time indeed, up here on the throne, on the pyramid, inside a body which seems to be designed exclusively for the very purpose to serve as a monument.

More or less since the beginning of time, namely.

**Chapter 2**

The pyramid, on which the throne with Arthur on top was located, since the beginning of time, like already mentioned, stood on the surface of a planet singlemindedly created for the purpose of carrying the pyramid on its top. It was situated in the very middle of a solar system, singlemindedly created for the purpose of circling the planet, so, not the other way like it would be normal, and it found itself exactly in the very geometric center of an entire galaxy.

This galaxy was not extraodinary in terms of its size, it was rather a miniature galaxy, the extraordinary bit about it was, that it too was designed artificially, by builders of planets, that would make the Magratheaner from back then look rather much like they were, indeed – rather old, namely,

Yet, this too, wasn´t that much extraodinary like it would seem perhaps, all just a little bit of hyper-math, hyper-physics, hyper-state-of-the-art-engineering (the art in itself laid more in the financing process, namely through a very Earth-like procedure, via hyper-indebtedness), but rather it was the fact, that this galaxy, this star-system, yes, this very planet with the pyramid with Athur on top of it, found itself in the very exact geometric center of the universe.

So, the center of the universe it was, where it took place that Arthur jumped down the golden stairs, his new body (incidentally, not that Arthurs old body no longer existed, it just laid somewhere mothballed on some rather dusty storage-planet in some rather dusty storage-galaxy in some corner of the universe) enabled him to manage the gigantic difference in heigth in such gigantic steps, too, whereat the whole thing seemed as effortless as Eddy Murphy in Beverly Hills Cop would take a couple of steps down a stairway, in between.

Yet, it was like a brick layer yearning for his vespertine beer-case, he was anticipating a nice relaxing evening and the self-regenerating golden stairs almost moaned about the extra work, when the body, weighing many megatons, hitted them in heavy impact, accompanied by a clanging burst. Though, they were quite used to it and it wasn´t much of a difference anyway in the clanging burst of this evening to any other (after all, many sound-engineers had spent much of their life-time designing that very precise clanking and bursting appearing still majestic enough, when such a huge and important body was on its way to a noble and just end and the frame inside which abberations were still tolerable was still of significance and set reassuringly wide enough).

Today, Arthur seemed to provoke this limit, though, for he was a bit more in a hurry than usual.

There are quite a bit of thoughts running through the head when one was a monument and had too much time on one´s hand, with only about that much occupation a bronze statue of Stalin might have had, which, honestly, must have been almost glad about the diversion, when hit from time to time by a little bit of dove-do.

Not that it would have had led to much, for Arthur, those thoughts, they were rather tedious anyway, and it was all the more rewarding to stick to the given limit and carry lofty and illustrious thoughts, well suiting for a monument positioned in the exact center of the universe, which, due to ingenuity and advanced technology, even was the very person itself, worthy enough to be honoured by a monument. Somehow very clever isn´t it, anyway, instead of building the honoured person a monument, one builds the person inside the monument, so to speak, whereat one had done this much more skillful here, one did not build the person inside the monument, one simply did _re_build the person as a monument.

Anyway, the thoughts monumental Arthur had, every now and then in between, were rather disturbing as well, yes, quite agonising from time to time (within the limits for agonising thoughts allowed a monument) and Arthur did not allow them too much space himself.

He also felt quite a deja vu along with all that, almost it was for him as if it belongs to him to have rather disturbing thoughts, wandering around in his sub-conscious, until they somewhere hit a wall or ceiling, saying somehow that´s all there is for now.

Arthur had accepted sometime, that there was something there, being not supposed to surface, something wicked, perhaps becoming that much wicked that it was maybe for the best actually, not to give any more space to develop. Something, that, if it actually managed to gnaw itself all the way up, could perhaps overstrain him, indeed.

Whereas, how can you ever overstrain something being chosen to be a living monument, erected in the very center of the cosmos!

Well, maybe the things blocked out were no small fry, either, then?

Something, that perhaps would acquit itself inversely proportional to Arthurs cosmical meaning?

He had honestly no rememberance about the time before he was a monument, though. Mind you, he was here now for so long, he quite possibly had forgotten it anyway. Therefore, where the heck was the difference, now?

Still, he made a mental note to have a word with someone tonight, alright.

Although he knew it would lead to nothing. For one thing was very obvious to him. Before they had made a monument out of him, there had been at some point in time a conscious decision on his part, for him being here and being what he was, did not have happened against his own proper will.

It had been his wish, rather.

**Chapter 3**

"How do you feel today?", asked him the administration-being that sat in front of him factually, "monumental?" It surely was more a polite question than real interest, for, the being, looking rather just like any beings in administration, let it be humanoid or plant-descendend (and it may just be called the administration-being here), was leafing through his file along the way.

"Monumental, yes, yes", Arthur replied obligingly. "Absolutely, erm... colossal and enormous, by all means", he added, after a short pause.

"It... wasn´t always like this, was it", the being replied, in studied casualness and finally seemed to have found something of relevance in his file, for the leafing had stopped.

This might very well be the case, Arthur, the monument, thought, sighing inwardly (just like a Stalin-bust would have sighed, after a particular hard day of Glasnost and Perestroika), essentially he was still busy digesting the hardships of crossing over via transmitter though.

Monument or not, as soon as he had reached the socket of the pyramid, he was requested to leave the planet, for which he had to use a system of transmitters, that carried him in rather short time out of the small galaxy of monuments, onto a planet, that was situated far away from it in a common-or-garden galaxy, that did not appear in any way holy whatsoever. It was a rather ordinary planet, namely, with rather functional buildings, living and sleeping quarters and administration complexes.

Arthur always used to have the feeling, whenever he was leaving the planet of monuments, to enter the rear side of a movie set, where he had a trailer waiting for him, just before next days shooting.

"Right", the being said, drawn out, "concerning your request..."

Arthur sighed inwardly, another time, scratching a particular golden patch of skin. He knew what was about to come, his "thoughts", as he used to call them, had really pestered him quite nastily today, so that he had decided to call on the administration-being, his administrator in charge, yet, he knew perfectly well, that it would lead to not much.

"It´s right in your contract, we had closed with you back then. You´ve always felt inferior, stepped-over, no one seemed to take any notice of you, pushed around you felt and abased and insulted and, what´s this here", the administration-being bent itself a little forward, as if a fit of far-sightedness and him having reached a spot in small-print were shaking hands in a kind of hearty and cheerful agreement, "you´ve always lacked... tea?"

"Erm, right, tea. Dried leaves of a certain plant, of a certain long lost planet, after which its inhabitants could feel a certain not to be underestimated addiction and a certain romantic emotional binding and longing, from time to time." Arthur almost heard servo-drives in his body clicking and whirring, quickly serving him an anti-tea-addiction-hormone, yet he knew it was only imagination, he was "tea"total for a long time now.

"Alright, then. So, you were unhappy and discontented and we promised you we would have the perfect solution for it. We gave you something for balance, you are the reason this universe exists …kdfierjfhjrujdnj..." He now said something Arthur quickly blanked out. The translating section in his brain functioned quite perfectly as ever, yet there was another part in him, simply refusing to pass on the already translated, in a perfect no, no, oh Come On, No! Not with me-fashion. "...And we wanted to dignify this in an appropriate manner. Then there were the means in this time, there was enough public funding available, before it would expire and cut from next year´s budget, convenient credit, and so we decided to take action. We changed your own little shabby body, into something worthy a monument, great and undying and everlasting and put you back in time, rather towards the beginning of it, namely, together with other memorable stuff, for which", the being now appeared a trifle derogatory, "an entire miniature galaxy almost was a bit out of scale." It bent over and seemed to fixate Arthur, who sat in some sort of specially adjusted staircase or ramp, which thus enabled the rather little being to meet him eye-to-eye. (Arthur couldn´t help to notice it had put on a kind of sardonic grin, apparently.) "We weren´t even able to fill it up properly, up ´till today. There just don´t seem to be enough nobility in the world these days."

The being seemed to straighten his papers now as if to signal the time Arthur was allocated was over now.

"Right. You know what, Mr. Dent? You are free to cancel your contract anytime and leave."

**Chapter 4**

Years later Arthur had done this, then, he had sold of his golden enormous body, was able to pay with this astronomically high sales revenue his astronomically high bills, which the transfer and the costs for storing his body had brought on. The body, which once was a vivid monument of the person to everybody verifiably owed the creation of the universe once, was now just a non-vivid monument of all the long time, all the aeons it stood on top of the pyramid, until a timely and dimensional window opened and it became the victim of an assault of islamic extremists of a parallel Earth. (Al Quaida confessed the assault, yet, as the unheard-of meaning and cosmical relevancy of this act revealed itself to the very much surprised public, a whole bunch of other islamic groups confessed (surveys and polls thereto came up with the result, that about a thousand new groups must have been founded anew, just for the purpose to eek out some publicity out of it) and all the struggles and frictions that thereby resulted lead to exceedingly bloody conflicts, in course of which a superbomb came into action, that erased this parallel Earth out of existence again.  
>(About which no one was really truly sorry about afterwards, not even the inhabitants of this parallel Earth itself.))<p>

Yet nothing of this came to Arthur´s attention, instead he was now finally willing and able to confront his problems and to go to an exo-psychiatrist, he hadn´t have left any money to pay one, still he had found one which was rather well renowned to take care of him, after he had promised to recommend him to wealthy clients.

The first sittings weren´t too much rewarding, it had been obvious quite soon that there was a point in Arthur´s past better no to be touched, which must have been such a traumatic event, that he began to roll up like a hedge-hog, yet bawl like a left-alone baby-seal, each time it was even touched.  
>This exo-psychiatrist now, specialised in traumas and species of the local galaxy of all kinds, was inconspicuously leafing through a professional journal on the side, after Arthur had reached just another dead spot again and it was obvious it wouldn´t go on so soon after it.<p>

Arthur lay on a couch, specially designed, so that it could adapt to the various demands of comfort of the various species of aliens and had shut his eyes, so he was not aware of it. (Anyway, the couch turned by itself, just as it was required in the according phases of therapy. (Or the according need of the therapist to leaf through a professional journal.))

Arthur moaned lightly and tried to moisten his dry mouth with his parched tongue, right away the couch delivered a cup of a liquid, suitable to his metabolism, in this case a beverage based on water.

The psychiatrist-being, that looked like a log of wood, stopped leafing.  
>"Well", it said woodenly, now that it saw a slight chance of starting some sort of a trial balloon (even though a rather cheaply self-tinkered one, about which it would not be such a pity it would get stuck in a current line ineffectively) and let drop something like wood-shavings (only it was just that it leaks when it speaks), "why don´t you just spill your guts, say the first thing that comes to your mind..."<p>

Arthur did not have to think twice about that the first thing that came to his mind, for that was simply he´d rather spill his guts literally than figuratively, for his subconscious had some very good reasons for repressing things. Guilt, was the first thing that surfaced up, namely and, by the way, the second one too and so on in just an endless row of things that would come up when he only looked at them too closely and which would have only one common denominator, guilt, namely.  
>Well, at an even closer look these things coming to surface all seem to yell this, too, GUILT!<br>Yet, the tricky thing about that problem was he couldn´t get any closer to it, it was as if he would quickly approach the point at which his mind would just right and simply refuse to cooperate in partnership and rather start to just simply sit down and sulk.  
>What he had found out, yet, was, that there were ways to circumvent this in a tricky manner, in that he would just simply talk about things that would be equivalent, yet not the actual causative matter to which access was declined to him alright.<p>

"Guilt, it would be, probably", said the log of wood and dropped some more shavings, for this it still knew from former sittings. "Yet about what? Did... you play with fire?" it now asked provocatively, for it knew that it could be a successful approach in alien therapy to confront them with something from the own proper back-ground and Arthur was intelligent enough to be well aware that for a being that looked like a log to play with fire was just a terrible and naughty thing to do.  
>Somehow this actually seemed to motivate him to say something, in the end.<p>

"Well, you know", Arthur now said, in a bright and cheerful manner (for he knew he would just lie to himself anyway), "on good old Earth" (he did not have to make futher explanations, for he had spoken of it on earlier sittings, yes, to be more precise, he didn´t speak of anything else all the time anyway) "there was a man once named Dschingis Khan and quite a nasty evildoer he was, who had done quite a lot of nasty things not at all liked by a whole lot of people, for it more or less directly or indirectly led to their unvoluntary demise, then there was... well, which one shall we take, the list is quite long, oh, well, let´s just take this guy Pizzaro, who also had pissed of a good deal of people, because he wanted to get a hold of things that people were just not willing to let go, because it just simply happened to be theirs, so they were then brought to a state of mind, where it more or less didn´t matter to them anymore, if what they had possessed once now still did belong to them or to the people Pizarro wanted to get in his favour thereby – because they had all been massacred, shit happens, and those were just the natives of Middle-America and there were those of North-America, too, who did not have golden things to take away from them, yet hunting grounds and those too were taken away from them, by just sending them to the Eternal Hunting-Grounds for a change, namely, and then", Arthur got more and more fired up, "there were Stalin and Mao and Hitler as well, and, wow, those guys didn´t really miss out to drop a brick or two if you could call sheer and ugly killing of people that, to just pop in a little euphemism in here in between, to chill everybody and I mean this is all plain and simple demonstration of sheer and utter bad taste enough, yet then it got really not comic but cosmic on Earth, before it was finished with her then right away again, for she was destroyed to make room for hyperspatial bypass, just shortly before such was made superflous anyway- I mean, where were all these guys, these tree-sitters, to prevent them from being cut down, where were they, then?"  
>It looked at the log-being accusingly as if it were in any way responsible for it.<p>

"Anyway, the Earth was destroyed and I set sails for a cosmic journey and..."  
>Arthur hesitated briefly, because he suddenly felt his left toe twitch, yet before he could continue he felt it in his right toe as well and so on until he realised he slowly had reached a point from whereon it began to become dangerous.<br>Whereabout his panic began to increase, until there was no stopping anymore and he began to twitch uncontrollably all over his body.

The psychiatrist-being felt obliged to take over and said casually: "Now, why don´t we just summon up what´s nagging you all the time, shall we. A. Our universe owes you it´s existence - erm, many thanks for that again, but couldn´t you perhaps just left out one or two minor problems in it and thereby include in it two or three more possible solutions...? A joke. Right, B. The Earth was destroyed by the so-called Vogons. C. There are your problems of cosmic scale."  
>Arthur seemed to listen with only one ear, the other seemed to be preoccupied with trying to start a conversation with his nose, it was certainly about when there would be more pleasurable subjects up ahead for everybody.<p>

"Well", the exo-psychiatrist carried on, "we know A, B and C, only D we don´t know. So, how do we proceed? A relates to B, same as C relates to D, so, very simply, we use for a solution of the said something like the rule of three. It´s quite simple, is it not. The Earth was destroyed by the Vogons and you are more or less responsible for the coming to being of our universe, but suffer from such cosmic problems, for that there should be something quite extraordinary, to just keep the balance."  
>The being bent over a little as if the now slightly trembling Arthur would be a nice open fire and it would want to put another log on the fire or to poke the gloom at least a little.<br>"The solution is but quite simple."  
>It bent over even a bit more for another poke then added:<br>"You have destroyed your own universe."

And - Arthur rolled up, shut his eyes and fell into a kind a catatonic stupor, from which he would not awake for a million years.

People soon constructed a mausoleum around him and surged in heeps to visit him and that´s what it was about Arthur´s try not to be a monument anymore.  
>Somehow it just plainly didn´t work out.<p>

**Chapter five**

Ford was in a rather cheerful mood, given the fact that he didn´t exist anymore, in a sense, and he felt not in any way bothered by it.

to be continued


End file.
